Dont just restrict your choices to American based aggregators. When I had to set up my Australian bulk SMS service, a friend told me to check out a list of companies he gave me. The best by far turned out to be a UK company. I was sceptical about the performance so we set up a test.
I was comparing SMS messages sent from my mobile handset to another mobile handset, with SMS messages sent from my browser here in Australia, to my web server in Texas, processed by ColdFusion, with the message forwarded to the service in the UK, which routed the message to whoever they were routing messages through that day (somewhere in Africa that day) back to the Australian phone network, through to the carrier of the handset i addressed the message to. Believe it nor not, (and i had to do this quite a few times before i believed it) the message sent through the web site and that convoluted route around the world nearly always beat the one sent from handset to handset. Good aggregators will have relationships that allow messages to go regardless of the carrier and country of the recipient. You dont want to have to care which carrier the recipient is using. WIth good aggregators, all you need is the correct phone number and they take care of routing it to whatever country the handset happens to be in at the moment. If an Australian mobile user is in the Swiss Alps or in Zimbabwe right now with the handset turned on, an SMS from my site will find him. The aggregators all work on the basis of credits. 1 credit per SMS message, or 2 credits for a MMS message. The more you buy at once, the less each credit costs, then as you send the messages, you use the inventory of credits you've bought. Some of the aggregators have a time limit on the credits, so if you havent used them up within say a year, you lose whatever's left. I built an interface so that the customer side would send messages into my site, and that is completely separated from the billing system and the output side. I could re-route the messages through any aggregator i might do a deal with. Wholesale prices of SMS messages change from day to day so if you're going to pay attention to your costs, you need to be able to switch from one aggregator to another without disrupting your service at all, and not losing any messages. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Bryan Hogan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 5:38 PM > > To: CF-Talk > > Subject: SOT: Bulk SMS out. > > > > All, > > > > I need to send ~100K SMS messages out a day (No worries, not spam.) I > > am looking at two options. The first is buying a server solution and > > the second is using a web service. If I chose the server solution I > > would have to contract with the carriers and call their APIs directly. > > The cost for a web service is too much. > > > > Has anyone here done this on this scale before? Anyone know of any > > server solutions, lower cost web services, or any other resources you > > can point out? > > > > Initial setup resources and monthly fees are not as important as per > > message cost; however, both of course are not unlimited. This is > > MISSION Critical ENTERPRISE scale and must perform as such. > > > > Thanks, > > B > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;160198600;22374440;w Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:301728 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
